Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once noted that "nunneries in the old days were veritable storehouses of the most delectable tidbits." Perhaps that is why the much-maligned Lucrezia Borgia is said to have truly felt at home only in the company of pious cloistered nuns. In his landmark study, Holy Anorexia, Rudolph Bell focused his attention on holy women who survived on nothing but the eucharistic wafer. Cristina Mazzoni, taking the opposite tack, savors the food writings and images of a broad spectrum of Catholic saints and holy women. A native of Italy and a splendid cook herself, Mazzoni accords due attention to her fellow countrywomen, as well she should given the importance of Italian cookery (Catherine of Genoa, Angela of Foligno, Gemma Galgani), but includes numerous other holy women and their cuisines as well: Germany (Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, and Margaret Ebner), France (Margaret Mary Alacoque, Thérèse of Lisieux), Spain (Teresa of Avila), colonial South America (Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz), England (Margery Kempe), and even the United States (Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was the first person born in the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church). In her Introduction, Mazzoni invites the reader "to seek out and savor with me...the food concocted, dished out, bitten into, tasted, and swallowed in the writings of holy women: food that may be mundane, unexceptional, and commonplace, but food that may also be delicious, nutritious, indulgent, or healthful. Whether in the form of stockfish and stew or chocolate and jam, whether cooked as lasagna with greens or curdled into a fine or bitter cheese, this food—through metaphors and similes, through anecdotes and memories—leads to mystical connections, underlines the presence of meaning even, or especially, in the midst of seeming meaninglessness, and leads us to share in the pleasure of cooking, eating, and learning at a divine table in God's kitchen.">
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"Her passion for the kitchen peppers her writing and analysis. In The Women in God's Kitchen, she serves up a delicious fritto misto (mixed fry) in 12 chapters, each revolving around a theme related to different aspects of cooking and eating... Dr. Mazzoni takes old wineskins, so to speak, and pours in new wine, a fresh way of tasting the writings of these holy and sage women....The Women in God's Kitchen opens the kitchen door wide and lets in the reader famished for something nectarous and new. Peering into the pots and pans, the oven and the larder, the reader savors morsels of spirituality hidden up to now. In The Women in God's Kitchen, female voices tell us much about Otherness and community formation in our divided and divisive world, quetly insisting that women find ways to speak wisely while serving and working amid a patriarchal "dining room"."- National Catholic Reporter, February 10, 2006
Mazzoni (romance languages, Univ. of Vermont), the author of the
much-acclaimed Saint Hysteria as well as an authority on the life of modern
mystic Gemma Galgani, has worked something like a miracle in this brief
book. It is at once a pleasing collection of stylish essays, a journey
through one person's spirituality, and a profound work of scholarship.
Mazzoni finds and follows the trail of breadcrumbs-the fraught place of food
and food writing-through the lives and works of dozens of holy women from
Byzantine times to the day of Therese of Lisieux. The implications of
Mazzoni's gracefully stated paradoxes and questions are enormous; her ideas
are likely to cast a wide and bright light both for scholars in many fields
and for the common reader seeking to understand the present in the light of
the past. Highly recommended." (starred review) - Library Journal
(Library Journal )much-acclaimed Saint Hysteria as well as an authority on the life of modern
mystic Gemma Galgani, has worked something like a miracle in this brief
book. It is at once a pleasing collection of stylish essays, a journey
through one person's spirituality, and a profound work of scholarship.
Mazzoni finds and follows the trail of breadcrumbs-the fraught place of food
and food writing-through the lives and works of dozens of holy women from
Byzantine times to the day of Therese of Lisieux. The implications of
Mazzoni's gracefully stated paradoxes and questions are enormous; her ideas
are likely to cast a wide and bright light both for scholars in many fields
and for the common reader seeking to understand the present in the light of
the past. Highly recommended." (starred review) - Library Journal
"Christina Mazzoni's homey, understated approach in The Women in God's Kitchen belies grand intentions and heterodox ideas...Her breadth of vision and expertise is as expansive as her intentions...Scholars of food culture, literature, religion, and women's studies in search of a scholarly and nuanced version of the interplay among food, religion, women, and sensuality should read Mazzoni's book. It fits the zeitgeist of the new millennium." -Food and Foodways Magazine
(Food and Foodways Magazine )“Her passion for the kitchen peppers her writing and analysis. In The Women in God’s Kitchen, she serves up a delicious fritto misto (mixed fry) in 12 chapters, each revolving around a theme related to different aspects of cooking and eating… Dr. Mazzoni takes old wineskins, so to speak, and pours in new wine, a fresh way of tasting the writings of these holy and sage women.…The Women in God’s Kitchen opens the kitchen door wide and lets in the reader famished for something nectarous and new. Peering into the pots and pans, the oven and the larder, the reader savors morsels of spirituality hidden up to now. In The Women in God’s Kitchen, female voices tell us much about Otherness and community formation in our divided and divisive world, quetly insisting that women find ways to speak wisely while serving and working amid a patriarchal “dining room”.”- National Catholic Reporter, February 10, 2006
"Christina Mazzoni's homey, understated approach in The Women in God's Kitchen belies grand intentions and heterodox ideas...Her breadth of vision and expertise is as expansive as her intentions...Scholars of food culture, literature, religion, and women's studies in search of a scholarly and nuanced version of the interplay among food, religion, women, and sensuality should read Mazzoni's book. It fits the zeitgeist of the new millennium." -Food and Foodways Magazine
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About the Author
Cristina Mazzoni is Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Vermont. She is the editor of Angela of Foligno's Memorial and author of Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture, Maternal Impressions: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Literature, and Theory, and, with Rudolph Bell, The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint.
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